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EJToday: Top Headlines

EJToday is SEJ's selection of new and outstanding stories on environmental topics in print and on the air, updated every weekday. SEJ also offers a free e-mailed digest of the day's EJToday postings, called SEJ-beat. SEJ members are subscribed automatically, but may opt out here. Non-members may subscribe here. EJToday is also available via RSS feed. Please see Editorial Guidelines for EJToday content.

"Living in the middle of a natural gas boom can be pretty unsettling. The area around the town of Silt, Colo., used to be the kind of sleepy rural place where the tweet of birds was the most you would hear. Now it's hard to make out the birds because of the rumbling of natural gas drilling rigs." ...

"Biodiversity has decreased by an average of 28 percent globally since 1970 and the world would have to be 50 percent bigger to have enough land and forests to provide for current levels of consumption and carbon emissions, conservation group WWF said on Tuesday."

"PORTLAND, Maine -- Frank Knight's decades-long battle to save New England's tallest elm served as an inspiring tale of devotion, so it is fitting that he will be laid to rest in a coffin made from the tree he made famous. Knight, who died Monday at 103, had affectionately referred to the 217-year-old elm nicknamed Herbie as "an old friend." The massive tree succumbed to Dutch elm disease and was cut down two years ago."

"BRUSSELS -- Airlines flying to and from European airports have complied with the EU Emissions Trading Scheme and reported their greenhouse gas emissions data, except for the refusal of aircraft operators from China and India."

"PITTSBURGH -- The Pennsylvania Department of Health says it investigates every claim by residents that gas drilling has caused health problems, but several people say the agency's actions don't match its words."

"A pioneering proposal to build a wind power transmission line on the ocean floor from southern Virginia to northern New Jersey cleared a hurdle on Monday when the Interior Department opened the way for the project’s sponsors to start work on an environmental impact statement."

"The state of Wisconsin is no longer a hot bed for metallic sulfide mining, having its Legislature kill a bill in March that would have streamlined mining permit process in favor of mining companies. But it is one of the hotbeds for another type of mining, sand mining, a billion-dollar business."

"Sitting at the kitchen table with his wife, Carole, Mervin Klees recalled showing up to work at the Burlington Northern Santa Fe train shops outside West Burlington. He and his coworkers would file into the massive locomotive repair building early in the morning, where the maintenance crew sometimes had re-fitted the pipes in the ceiling the night before. To get to the pipes, workers would have to cut through the asbestos insulation."

"You may think of surfers as slackers. But in Santa Cruz, Calif., they're city council members and business owners. And they're also conservationists — who just got their piece of the central California coast named a World Surfing Reserve."

"Long before surf music topped the charts and long before surfers had crazy nicknames, surfers have been riding the waves in Santa Cruz.

On a recent day, the crowd included 'Wingnut' — also known as Robert Weaver — and other surfers. He pointed out some friends: 'There's Frosty, there's Boots, there's Fathead.'

"The Obama administration is appealing a federal court ruling that scrapped U.S. EPA's retroactive veto of a large mountaintop removal coal mining permit in West Virginia, according to court documents filed Friday and [Monday]."

"BONN -- Governments met in Bonn Monday to tackle curbing global greenhouse gas emissions and helping developing countries adapt to the unavoidable effects of climate change. During the next 10 days, they will work towards writing a global, legally-binding climate agreement, extending the Kyoto Protocol into a second commitment period, and building funding support for developing nations to US$100 billion a year by 2020."

"EDMONTON -- On the one year anniversary of the Slave Lake fire, here is a troubling thought. There is a good chance — an ever-increasing chance, as a matter of fact — that it will happen again. Perhaps not to Slave Lake, Alta., but to another community, or communities, nestled in the national tinderbox that is the great boreal forest stretching from British Columbia to Labrador."

"As the battle wages on over the safety of feeding antibiotics to livestock for growth promotion, a new report reveals yet another source of unregulated antibiotics in American animal feed--spent ethanol grain."

"A new report named the Potomac the nation’s most endangered river, saying it is threatened by nutrient and sediment pollution that lowers the quality of drinking water and kills marine life and will only get worse if Congress rolls back regulations in the Clean Water Act."